Everything passes, and what remains of former times, what remains of life, is the spiritual. In everything we do, the claim of the Absolute is unchanging.
Paul KleeRead
My mirror probes down to the heart. I write words on the forehead and around the corners of the mouth. My human faces are truer than the real ones.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the deeper understanding of human expression and identity through art.
Paul Klee emphasizes the role of art in capturing the true essence of human emotions and identities, suggesting that his artistic representations reveal deeper truths than mere physical appearances. By metaphorically probing the 'heart', he implies that genuine expression lies beyond superficial features, highlighting the connection between art and true human experience.
Themes
ArtIdentityExpressionTruthHumanCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the impact of art on human expression.
More from Paul Klee
All quotes βThe painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.
Paul KleeRead
To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers.
Paul KleeRead
You adapt yourself to the contents of the paintbox.
Paul KleeRead
It is a great difficulty and a great necessity to have to start with the smallest.
Paul KleeRead
All art is a memory of age-old things, dark things, whose fragments live on in the artist.
Paul KleeRead
Similar quotes
Music, feelings of happiness, mythology, faces worn by time, certain twilights and certain places, want to tell us something, or they told us something that we should not have missed, or they are about to tell us something; this imminence of a revelation that is not produced is, perhaps, the esthetic event.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.
Martha GrahamRead
I thought fashion was just the pretext to do images with lots of freedom and get them published in magazines. You could express your point of view, make statements about women and about what you believe in.
Peter LindberghRead
The anarchist painter is not the one who will create anarchist pictures, but the one who will fight with all his individuality against official conventions.
Paul SignacRead
People still love a good story, and I don't think that will change.
Bob IgerRead
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As if some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--Only this and nothing more.
Edgar Allan PoeRead